Civil War Causes/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby An image shows half of an American flag and half of a Confederate flag. Tim is sleeping and snoring in the back seat of a car next to Moby. Tim rests his head on Moby's shoulder. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Huh, wha—? Tim wakes up. MOBY: Beep. TIM: I'm not on your side. Moby points to a line separating where he and Tim sit. Tim's leg is over the line. MOBY: Beep. TIM: All right, all right. You didn't have to wake me up, you know. Tim reads from a typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, my older brother says the Civil War was all about states' rights. I always thought it was about slavery. Which is it? From, Soepot. Well, both. It's complicated. But historians still argue about what exactly caused the Civil War. First, let's get the basics out of the way. In 1860 and 1861, eleven southern states seceded. That means they left the United States to make their own country. They called themselves the Confederate States of America, or the Confederacy. The twenty-four states that stayed with the U.S. were called the Union. A map shows the Confederate and Union states. TIM: In April of 1861, Confederate troops fired on Union soldiers at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The Civil War began. An animation shows a cannon firing on Fort Sumter. Fire and smoke come out of the fort. TIM: President Abraham Lincoln knew that if he let states secede from the country whenever they wanted, it would set a bad example for the future. An image shows Abraham Lincoln. TIM: Any time a state didn't like the rules, they could just leave. But that's just what the Confederate states did. They believed in states' rights. That's the idea that each state gets to make its own laws. An image shows a partial map of the United States with the states renamed to things like "Steve", "Gamblestan", North Buddhista", "TaxFreeLand", "Democratia", "Christiana" and "Republicana". TIM: The 10th Amendment of the Constitution does give each state the right to make its own laws, as long as they don't go against federal law. The North and South disagreed about how powerful those federal laws should be. An image shows the10th Amendment. TIM: In 1832, South Carolina almost seceded over this argument in the Nullification Crisis. South Carolina wanted the right to nullify, or cancel, a federal tariff that was hurting its economy. An image shows South Carolina on a map of the United States. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Oh, a tariff is basically a tax, usually on trade. Tariffs usually favored northern industry and hurt southern farmers. Many historians argue that the main reason the southern states seceded was over states' rights. An image shows industrial plants in the Northern United States and farmhouses in the Southern United States. TIM: But others think that the main issue was slavery. By the time the U.S. Constitution was adopted in 1787, most of the states north of Delaware had made slavery illegal. An animation shows slaves picking and carrying cotton. TIM: They felt that slavery went against everything the United States was all about. An image shows the Constitution, with the preamble highlighted: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." TIM: From then until the Civil War, slavery divided the North and the South. An image shows Union representatives splitting from Confederate representatives in Congress. TIM: Free states were especially worried about the Louisiana Purchase lands, bought from France in 1803. A map shows the Louisiana Purchase. TIM: They didn't want any new states to be pro-slavery. In 1820, Northern and Southern states agreed to the Missouri Compromise. The map shows a line separating free and slave states evenly within the Louisiana Purchase. TIM: It basically divided the Louisiana Purchase evenly between slavery and freedom, and it set a balancing rule, so that for every free state that joined the Union, a slave state would also join. But in 1854, southern politicians managed to pass the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The line separating free and slave states is removed from the map. TIM: It repealed the Compromise of 1820 and said that any new state could be a slave state if it wanted to. The Supreme Court supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act with their infamous Dred Scott decision. An image shows the Supreme Court building. TIM: Dred Scott was a slave whose owner traveled throughout free states and territories. An image shows the slave, Dred Scott. TIM: The court said that even when he traveled to free states, Scott still belonged to his owner! It also said that African Americans could never be U.S. citizens, and that slave owners from the South could keep their slaves if they moved to free states. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Yeah, right? This angered abolitionists: those were people who were actively against slavery. So, there you have it. The states' rights and slavery issues both increased the differences between the North and the South. And President Lincoln was a strong opponent of both. The southern states seceded shortly after his election in 1860. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Actually, not all the Union states in the Civil War were free states. A map shows the Union states as Tim names them. TIM: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and what would become West Virginia were pro-slavery, but anti-secession. These border states fought with the Union to keep the country together. I know it's a lot of ground to cover; and believe me, there's a lot more detail if you're interested in it. Moby's leg crosses over the line on the car seat to Tim's side. TIM: By the way, you're on my side. Category:BrainPOP Transcripts